Hida Viloria (born May 29, 1968) is an American writer, author, producer, and human rights activist of Latin American origin.[1][2] Viloria is intersex, nonbinary, and genderfluid, using they/them pronouns.[3] They are known for their writing, their intersex and non-binary human rights activism, and as one of the first people to come out in national and media as a nonbinary intersex person.[4] Viloria is Founding Director of the Intersex Campaign for Equality.[5][6]
Viloria was born in Jamaica, Queens, New York, to recently immigrated Colombian and Venezuelan parents. Viloria was born with a form of congenital adrenal hyperplasia and a greatly enlarged clitoris as a result.[7] Their father, a physician, and mother, an ex-school teacher, chose to register and raise them as female without subjecting them to genital surgeries, which were generally recommended at the time as corrective procedures for infants with disorders of sexual development.[8][9] Their father felt that a surgery to reduce the size of their clitoris was medically unnecessary and therefore presented unjustifiable health risks.
Viloria attended Catholic schools in Queens, New York and Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut, from 1986 to 1988. They later transferred to the University of California, Berkeley and graduated in 1998 with an interdisciplinary studies degree in Gender and Sexuality with high honors and high distinction.
Career
Viloria is author of the book Born Both: An Intersex Life (Hatchette Book Group, March, 2017),[10] and co-author, with biologic sciences scholar Maria Nieto, Ph.D., of The Spectrum of Sex: The Science of Male, Female, and Intersex (Jessica Kingsley Publishers - Hatchette UK, February, 2020). Their essays on issues such as intersex genital mutilation, discrimination against intersex women in sports, sexuality, legal gender recognition, and gender identity, have been published in venues such as The Washington Post, The Daily Beast, Huffington Post, The Advocate, Ms., The New York Times, The American Journal of Bioethics, the Global Herald, CNN.com, and more.
Viloria used female pronouns earlier in her life and activist career.[12][13][7] Later, s/he used the pronouns “s/he” and “he/r” to reflect he/r intersex identity.[1]
Born Both: An Intersex Life
In January 2017, Kirkus reviewed Viloria's memoir, Born Both, saying: "Intelligent and courageous, [Born Both] chronicles one intersex person's path to wholeness, but it also affirms the right of all intersex and non-binary people to receive dignity and respect".[14] In May 2017, Meghan Daum reviewed Born Both in The New York Times, saying: "Viloria does us the even greater service (it's more of a gift, really) of showing us what it means to live not just as both a man and a woman but also as a third gender that eventually emerges as the right one."[15] Speaking on the LGBTQ&A podcast in December 2021, Viloria said, "The reason I did my memoir is because I felt like there's a story that we don't hear enough of about intersex people, which is that it's amazing and wonderful to be intersex. That's literally my experience."[16]Born Both was nominated for a 2018 Lambda Literary Award for LGBTQ non-fiction.
Viloria has been advocating publicly against the use of medically unnecessary cosmetic surgeries and hormone therapy on intersex infants and minors, also known as intersex genital mutilation, since 1997,[17] reaching audiences of over one hundred million via appearances in various documentaries about intersex people, including the first Hermaphrodites Speak!, and most notably on ABC's 20/20,[18]The Oprah Winfrey Show,[7] in Spanish on the Emmy nominated Spanish language show Caso Cerrado,[19] and at the UN Headquarters in New York City for Human Rights Day 2013.
In 2004, Viloria testified before the San Francisco Human Rights Commission on the need to ban medically unnecessary cosmetic genital surgeries on intersex infants and children.[20]
Between 2010 and 2017 Viloria published numerous essays speaking out against nonconsensual medically unnecessary surgeries in publications including CNN.com, The Advocate, The Huffingtion Post, and the Narrative Inquiry in Bioethics.[citation needed]
Opposing "disorders of sex development"
In 2006, the international medical establishment replaced the terms "hermaphrodite" and "intersex" with the term "disorders of sex development". In 2007, Viloria publicly critiqued the label and the homophobic and transphobic reasoning behind the replacement of 'intersex' with DSD.[21] They also argued that being raised to define oneself as disordered is psychologically harmful to intersex youth.[22]
Addressing discrimination against intersex women in sports
Viloria argued in 2009, on television[23] and in print[24] that Olympic sex testing is applied in a way that targets 'butch,' or masculine-looking, women.[25][26] In February 2010, then as Human Rights Spokesperson of the Organisation Intersex International (OII), they authored a petition to the International Olympic Committee demanding that intersex women athletes to be allowed to compete as is, and be de-pathologized.[27] The action resulted in Viloria being invited to participate in the International Olympic Committee's October 2010 meeting of experts on intersex women in sports, in Lausanne, Switzerland.[28]
In 2012, Viloria co-authored an article in the American Journal of Bioethics, with intersex Spanish hurdler Maria José Martínez-Patiño, the athlete responsible for overturning the IOC's long-standing mandatory chromosome testing policies, which critiqued the IOC's proposed regulations for women with high levels of naturally occurring testosterone (aka hyperandrogenism).[29] They also collaborated on an opinion piece with scholar Georgiann Davis[30] and also told The New York Times that the issues for intersex athletes remain unresolved: "Many athletes have medical differences that give them a competitive edge but are not asked to have medical interventions to 'remove' the advantage.... The real issue is not fairness, but that certain athletes are not accepted as real women because of their appearance."[31]
Birth registrations
In April 2017, Viloria became the second American recipient of an intersex birth certificate, issued by the city of New York.[32]
National and global affiliations and activism
In spring 2010, Viloria joined the Organisation Intersex International (OII), the first international intersex organization, was appointed Human Rights Spokesperson, and began lobbying against discriminatory regulations for intersex women athletes. In spring 2011, Viloria was voted Chairperson of OII, upon founder Curtis Hinkle's retirement. Viloria stepped down in November 2017, when Intersex Campaign for Equality left OII.[33]
In 2012, as OII Chairperson, Viloria spearheaded the first unified, global call for human rights by and for intersex people, in a letter signed by thirty leading intersex advocacy organizations, to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights.[34]
On Human Rights Day, 2013, Viloria became the first openly intersex person to speak at the U.N., by invitation, at the event "Sport Comes Out Against Homophobia", along with fellow "out" pioneers, tennis legend Martina Navratilova, and NBA player Jason Collins.[35][36]
In 2002, Viloria spoke about feeling blessed they did not experience forced infant genital surgeries on 20/20.[citation needed]
In 2007, on The Oprah Winfrey Show, Viloria likened society's lack of understanding of intersex people, and the pressure intersex people experience to identify as men or women, to what people of mixed African-American and Caucasian race sometimes experience, saying, "Society pressures you to choose sides, just like they pressure mixed race people to decide, you know... 'Are you really black? Are you really white?'" Viloria went on to say "I have both [sides]".[7]
In September 2015, the UN's Free & Equal Campaign for Equality produced a video of Viloria[38] in conjunction with the release of their groundbreaking resource the Intersex Fact Sheet,[39] and in 2016 Viloria was one of the "Intersex Voices" featured in the Free and Equal Campaign for Equality's Intersex Awareness Campaign.[40]
Viloria has also advocated against intersex genital mutilation via essays,[41][42][24] and in their 2017 memoir, Born Both: An Intersex Life.[10]
Viloria, Hida (2015). "Hida Viloria". In Wenke, Joe (ed.). The Human Agenda: Conversations about Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity. Trans Uber Books. ISBN978-0986337932.
Viloria's memoir Born Both: An Intersex Life was selected as one of six books in People magazine's "The Best New Books" list in April 2017,[43][44] one of School Library Journal's Top Ten Adult Books for Teens, and was a 2018 Lambda Literary Award nominee for LGBTQ non-fiction.
↑ Patricia Viloria, Hida (2012). "Reexamining Rationales of "Fairness": An Athlete and Insider's Perspective on the New Policies on Hyperandrogenism in Elite Female Athletes". The American Journal of Bioethics. 12 (7): 17–19. doi:10.1080/15265161.2012.680543. PMID22694024. S2CID20865730.
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